High Country: The Silicon Valley of Weed
Das Vice-Mag hat den ersten Teil seiner Doku über legalen Marijuana-Anbau als Wirtschaftsfaktor online gestellt. Wird langsam Zeit, dass wir das Thema hierzulande auch mal wieder auf den Tisch packen.
There is no place in the world quite like Colorado, which just laid groundwork for the first regulated, taxed, legal recreational weed market in the United States. When Amendment 64 kicks in next January, adults 21 and over in Colorado will be able to legally purchase up to an ounce of weed from licensed dispensaries. They will also be able to tend their own personal grows of up to a half dozen cannabis plants, provided only three are flowering at any given time.
In a place where technology, politics, economics, science, and the pursuit of happiness collide in the latest and greatest vaporizer, chatter of a proverbial Silicon Valley of Weed has never sounded less less crazy than it does today. There are fortunes to be made in the new business of getting stoned.
High Country: A Mind-Melting Journey Through the Silicon Valley of Weed (Part 1)
Marijuana from Space
Der ehemalige NASA-Wissenschaftler Dale J. Chamberlain hat früher Botanik-Systeme für die ISS und das Space Shuttle gebaut und Anbauverfahren für kommende Mond-Basen entwickelt. Jetzt wendet er dieses Wissen in seiner neuen „High Altitude School of Hydroponics“ (H.A.S.H.) für Homegrower in Colorado an. Kein Scheiß. Es gibt eintägige Seminare für Amateurgärtner sowie eine Master Class mit Abschluss für professionelle Dope-Bauern. Ich will da hin.
Chamberlain knows more about far-out farming than almost anyone. At the Kennedy Space Center in the early 1990s he studied horticulture for future lunar colonies. “I assisted in building a plant-growth chamber that is still on the space shuttle,” he says, explaining that low-gravity hydroponics left him uniquely prepared to handle Colorado’s new legal landscape. “[…]
“Will there be weed in space?” He inhales and holds it for a beat before answering. […] anyone who’s seen how astronauts go to the bathroom knows a bong in zero gravity could be very messy. Chamberlain is undaunted. “Anything can be engineered. I’m envisioning the filter in my mind now, you’d have to somehow strain the water from the air. It could be done, but there are better ways in space. They’d probably use a vaporator-type system or even edibles. The short answer to your question is: hemp in space!”
Meet the Former NASA Scientist Who’s Teaching Coloradans How to Grow Marijuana Legally (via Animal NY)
Israels secret Marijuana-Lab
Netter Artikel in der NYTimes über ein Marijuana-Labor in Israel, wo sie angeblich das stärkste Gras der Welt gezüchtet haben.
Among the rows of plants growing at a government-approved medical marijuana farm in the Galilee hills in northern Israel, one strain is said to have the strongest psychoactive effect of any cannabis in the world. […] Marijuana is illegal in Israel, but farms like this one, at a secret location near the city of Safed, are at the cutting edge of the debate on the legality, benefits and risks of medicinal cannabis. Its staff members wear white lab coats, its growing facilities are fitted with state-of-the-art equipment for controlling light and humidity, and its grounds are protected by security cameras and guards.
But in addition to the high-tech atmosphere, there is a spiritual one. The plantation, Israel’s largest and most established medical marijuana farm — and now a thriving commercial enterprise — is imbued with a higher sense of purpose, reflected by the aura of Safed, an age-old center of Jewish mysticism, as well as by its name, Tikkun Olam, a reference to the Jewish concept of repairing or healing the world.
Photos from the Marijuana-Farm
Grassland ist ein Fotoprojekt von jemandem namens H.Lee, der ein Jahr lang die Arbeit auf einer Marijuana-Farm bei San Francisco geknippst hat. Wired hat anlässlich der Legalisierung von Shit in Washington und Colorado ein Posting dazu, NPR hat auch was (tolle Headline: America’s Big Backyard Pot Business) und der Infotext auf der Website von Lee liest sich wie der Anfang eines Cannabis-Märchens für Kiffer. Toll!
A few hours north of San Francisco, along the coast, lies a rugged landscape of towering Redwoods and Douglas Firs. Cut with rivers and fog, it is iconic American terrain, which draws countless RV-towing tourists who wind up and down logging roads all summer long.
But beneath this layer of green and golden splendor, there exists an unseen world that no maps can find, only a discriminating eye for unmarked dirt roads. To the initiated, there are signs, as clear as the highway billboards offering hydroponic paraphernalia, medical cannabis consultations, trimming solutions and turkey bags in bulk. These services are welcome flags to cannabis country, where droves of marijuana growers, both indoor and outdoor, hide in the hills and make their living.
Underground Marijuana-Factory in Rome busted
Youtube Direktabandoneddope, via Arbroath
Die italienische Polizei hat ein Marijuana Gewächshaus in einem stillgelegten U-Bahn-Tunnel in Rom ausgehoben. Oder wie es YT-Kommentator 44connected formuliert: „Everyone knows the pope smokes dope & tells stoner stories about Aliens creating clones & calling them Adams and Eves […] Thats some cosmic kick ass dope!“ Von der BBC:
Officers reportedly stumbled across the factory after smelling the pungent crop near an entrance, not far from the Italian central bank. The tunnel, just over half a mile (1km) long, was also being used to cultivate mushrooms. But behind a makeshift wall, police discovered rows of marijuana plants.
Video released by Italy’s financial police showed an underground greenhouse with thriving marijuana plants lit by halogen lights, and irrigated via a system of underground cisterns. There were also special chambers for drying and processing the crop. Italy’s financial police said the find was among their biggest ever seizures of cannabis – a total of 340kg of the drug with an estimated street value of 3m euros (£2.3m; $3.7m).
Marijuana Smoke Stencils
Fernando de La Rocque hat für ‘ne aktuelle Ausstellung Stencils aus Grasrauch gemacht. Das Ergebnis beeindruckt mich jetzt mal so überhaupt gar nicht, aber ich finde die Idee durchaus nett.
In a form of protest, Brazilian artist Fernando de la Rocque uses marijuana smoke to print images. For his smoke-printed series and exhibition entitled ‘Blow Job’, de la Rocque smokes cannabis, and blows the smoke onto stencils placed on paper—to ‘paint’ out drawings that are usually of religious or political figures, to spark controversy.
“More important than freedom to smoke marijuana is the freedom to think about it and make art with it,” the artist says about his work. “Polemic issues divide opinions, forcing people to think and debate. Inertia is useless when we want to overcome something.”
Medical Marijuana Growhouse-Pics
Rusty Blazenhoff von Laughing Squid hatte Zugang zu ‘nem Gewächshaus für Rezept-Dope, konnte dort fotografieren und hatte das Glück, kurz vor der Erntezeit da zu sein. Wunderschön!
Recently, I was allowed access to a marijuana growing operation in Oakland, California and had full access to photograph it. My tour guide, a commercial medical cannabis grower, let me take as many images as I liked as long as the operation’s details were un-identifiable (foremost, a concern of safety). As harvest time was near, I was lucky to be able to capture a few of the cannabis plants at their peak.
A Rare Look Inside a Commercial Medical Marijuana Growing Operation
Snoop Dogg-Portrait made from Dope
Jaon Mecier, über dessen Portraits aus Müll und Krams ich vor ein paar Monaten erst hier bloggte, hat jetzt für eine Ausstellung einen Snoop Dogg aus gerauchten Joints, Gras und Shit gemacht. Passender geht’s kaum.
Jason Mecier: Snoop Dogg (Marijuana on wood) (via Dangerous Minds)
Marijuana Wine
Diese Kombination kannte ich auch noch nicht: Mit Marijuana versetzter Wein. Kekse, Kuchen, Bier… alles schon gehabt. Wir haben sogar mal’ ne Pizza mit Shit belegt (hat aber nicht gekickt), aber Wein? Würde ich ja gerne mal probieren, aber ich schmeiß mein Gras (das ich nicht habe) sicher nicht in ‘ne Weinflasche. Wie auch immer: Marijuana-Wein! Yummy!
In wine country, pot-infused wines are the open secrets that present themselves in unmarked bottles at the end of winemaker dinners and very VIP tours (it bears mentioning that most winemakers are cagey enough to keep the manufacture of such wines far from winery grounds). The wines range in style and intensity as broadly as “normal” wines and winemakers do. Some practitioners of the fruit-forward, higher-alcohol, New World style take a similarly aggressive approach to infusing wine. “I know a winemaker that takes a couple of barrels a year and puts a ton of weed in it and lets it steep, and that wine is just superpotent,” says a James Beard Award–winning chef, who also asked not to be named. Henry, though, makes more classically styled wines, and with that reserve comes a more subtle hand with the cannabis.
Adjusted for volume, “special” wines can range from under a pound of marijuana per 59-gallon barrel to over 4 pounds per barrel. The result is a spectrum ranging from a gentle, almost absinthe-like effect to something verging on oenological anesthetic. Henry views his wine as a digestif, “like a fernet.” Recently he made a Riesling (unusual, in that most pot-infused wines are reds), mixing about an ounce of fairly dry (as opposed to fresh) marijuana (“I wanted less of a piney-oily texture”) with the wine in a 5-gallon carboy. After about five months, he bottled the wine, unfiltered, in 375-milliliter splits marked only with a hand-drawn skull and crossbones on the cap.
He is, it goes without saying, a popular, popular man at dinner parties.
BEYOND POT BROWNIES – Matthew Kronsberg looks at marijuana’s culinary trip from wacky weed to haute herb (via Reddit)
Ice Bong
Ich hab damals natürlich nie Bong geraucht und eine Eisbong schon gar nicht, aber eine Bong aus Eis habe ich noch nicht gesehen. Ich wette, die kommt entweder von diesem jungen Herrn aus Kanada oder von diesem jungen Herrn aus Whatdoiknow, der hier zwei Videos mit einem Tutorial online gestellt hat, wie man die Dinger selbermacht.
Genome of Marijuana Sequenced and Published
Wissenschaftler haben die Gensequenz von Shit analysiert und veröffentlicht. Ab jetzt wird alles gut.
A Netherlands-based company called Medicinal Genomics has just announced the successful genetic sequencing of Cannabis sativa, the highly regulated annual plant that has been widely consumed for centuries as an intoxicant and a medicine. The plant, known in the vernacular as grass, tea, or mooster, has been legalized in 16 U.S. states for use as a medical treatment for various disorders over the last decade, and according to Medicinal Genomics’ Kevin McKernan, the legal market for the substance is currently growing by 50 percent every year.
Genome of Marijuana Sequenced and Published, Original-Meldung auf Nature.com: Weed sequenced. No really – weed. – August 18, 2011
Osama Bin Laden was a Stoner: Marijuana found at Abbottabad Compound
Osama Bin Laden hatte bei seinem Versteck Marijuana angebaut, zusammen mit Kartoffeln und Grünkohl. Außerdem hat er sich jede Menge Futter und Cola kommen lassen. Auch wenn das Zeug dort ziemlich oft wild wächst, dass es zusammen mit Gemüse angebaut war, ist für mich ziemlich eindeutig: Up in Smoke.
Reporters at Bin Laden’s million-dollar hideout discovered small plots of marijuana growing in the deserted lots on the compound’s perimeter. The dope plants were planted on three sides of the compound, alongside some less sexy crops such as cabbage and potatoes, CNN reported Tuesday.
Marijuana crops planted outside Osama Bin Laden’s compound; farmers growing ganja near terror lair, Bin Laden Aides Are Said to Have Bought Bulk Orders of Pepsi, Coke
Related: CNN-Interview mit „the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it“. (via BoingBoing)
Ziggy Marleys Ganjacomic: Marijuanaman Preview
Comics Alliance hat ein Preview des gestern erschienenen Ganjacomics von Ziggy Marley: Marijuanaman.
Written by Joe Casey and illustrated beautifully by Jim Mahfood, the story is about a noble alien whose species has THC instead of DNA and his biological reaction to Earth’s cannabis plants causes him to transform into the superhero Marijuanaman and fight against an evil pharmaceutical corporation and its hired thug, Cash Money, and make the world aware of what “it’s all about” — which is to say, hemp.
Image Comics promotional materials claim “this is not the comic you think it is,” but we’re afraid it kind of is.
Ziggy Marley, Joe Casey and Jim Mahfood Grow ‘Marijuanaman’ [Preview]
Pregnant Girls’ Racing Car-DJing Marijuana Delivery Service
(Youtube Direktwhat?, via Boing Boing)
[update] Jo in den Comments sez: „Das isn Teil von Tom Sachs’ Nutsy’s (NY2002 und Berlin2003). is hammer! Riesenausstellung mit ner Riesenrennbahn quer durch. Da wurden Rennen gefahren von Tom Sachs und seinen Assistenten inkl Weed besorgen und rauchen und weiterfahren.“
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Tom Sachs at his Studio in New York
Tom Sachs’ 10 Bullets
